To think there will be many more disabled adults in 20 years?

I take older parenthood to be a proxy for class/education level - more likely to leave parenthood later for career reasons, and more likely to be able to afford IVF and similar.

The deal, broadly, used to be that if you get qualifications and get a full-time job you don't have to lie awake at night worrying about money. That contract has now been broken, hence why people are falling to bits. You need a certain standard of living to sustain full-time work and having to live in a house share at 35 despite working a full-time professional job is not right.

Older parents having kids who do better in school, is probably because they are wealthier and can throw money at extra tutoring and private schools, as needed.

This has nothing to do with the fact that older parents statistically have more children with birth defects. You could be a multi millionaire - unless there's a cure, no amount of money is going to fix that.

when the real value of salaries is less than that of pensions.

Seriously? The State Pension is only around £12.5K per annum I don't know any salaries that are that low. Maybe someone could do the maths, but that is definitely lower than the living wage.

Sorry where do people get that pension now is longer than before? Pension age for born in 1960s is 66 or 67 with life expectancy from birth of grand age of 70, though expected 80s with changes for the group. That's really not that super long pension age on average... 14 years average if we count 80s?
Just last week there was article about life expectancy drop as well.

“Pregnancies being propped up” is an interesting phrase. My second pregnancy was heavily “propped up” and DS2 is a healthy, capable young man who has been through mainstream school and is about to go to uni. My first pregnancy, in contrast, was not remotely “propped up” and DS1 has multiple complex disabilities as a result.

A few months ago there was a thread on here about disabled people not working. I mentioned that I was about to have an assessment for DS1’s eligibility for LCWRA. A poster replied who claimed to be a benefits assessor. They were incredibly condescending and demanded to know why it was me doing the assessment when DS1 is an adult. Clearly they hadn’t heard of the role of Legal Appointee so I very much doubt they were a benefits assessor of any sort. They informed me that “happily” it wasn’t up to me to decide if my son is eligible for LCWRA. It turned out they’d made up a whole little story in their head about my son. In their version, he had a mainstream life at mainstream school, did A levels, and then decided he was anxious and was going to sit in his room forever and not work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I probably should have congratulated them for their vivid imagination. I do wonder though how well assessors are actually trained. And if there are young people out there fitting the description she gave my son, I hope help is provided to support them into work.

I was actually kept awake night by the reference to The Purge and the reminder that the sick and disabled were first in line for culling under Nazi Germany.

Based on your post though it obviously hasn’t. Young workers with burnout are either being worked to the bone or are unsuitable for the role. Putting them on long term paid leave solves neither issue.

Agree - most people are really clueless and really sheltered. They tell themselves that disability and hardship are things that happen to other people who must have somehow invited their own misfortune and not been resourceful enough. I work full-time (even though I probably shouldn't, but I have to) and I'm bloody glad of social safety nets because I'm not delusional enough to think that you can bootstraps your way out of incapacity.

Another one in agreement. We really need to stop valuing people by their economic value/contribution alone and allowing disabled people to be dehumanised, stigmatised and to be viewed as nothing more than a burden. It's a very slippery and dangerous slope, and the reason why I don't support assisted dying as I fear it could in time be misused and abused.

Build more prisons. The answer is not letting a rapist out after 5 years, or letting a murderer out after 15.

It’s a very tinny risk still and as I said it’s made up
for better conditions . Children to older parents do better in school and jobs and have less probability of using the welfare system .

I mean I knew hardly any at my own school as a kid, or when I was a teacher for twenty years or in my own family.

I couldn't agree more. A lot of people are naive about the possible consequences of legalising assisted dying imo. Especially as we're living in a time when people's resentment of anyone they perceive as a 'burden', or who has something they don't have due to being less fortunate than they are, seems to be reaching new levels. I think it's really frightening.

Add to that that a good chunk of the current working age population will never get a state pension, so it will never be their turn

And you know this how?

I always say it: if you wouldn't hire them, you should be content for them to live on benefits.

Quite - it doesn't matter how much a disabled person wants to work if employers won't hire them or keep them on. I'm sure others have seen the news stories about the guys with LD&A whose singular obsessions are helping the binmen or helping out in the supermarket, and yet they aren't offered paid positions.

Very few pensioners were net contributors when they were earning and paying taxes, and very few current taxpayers are net contributors. Retirement is also much, much longer and more expensive than it used to be. There are too few net contributors and people are retiring for much longer - recipe for disaster. Add to that that a good chunk of the current working age population will never get a state pension, so it will never be their turn. What are they supposed to do?

It's not about targeting/bashing pensioners, it's simply about pointing out that eventually you run out of taxpayer's money when the real value of salaries is less than that of pensions.

I don’t agree here as this was not such a problem in the past yet support and focus on well being has improved.

I don't think this is true. From what I understand, the tories looked into it and found that very few people disabled enough for disability benefits would stand any chance of holding down much if any work at all. The criteria have become much stricter over the years as the level of disability in society has got higher. And yet it suits their voting base to keep claiming that people are just exaggerating their mild conditions or making it all up completely. All but one person that I know on disability benefits tried for years to make work work (and some of us disabled ourselves further by doing so) but we all got progressively worse to the point it wasn't possible. The only one that doesn't have this long history of working through ill health had a life changing health even that disabled them overnight. Before that they worked full time without issue as far as I'm aware.

It would probably be worth having a look at less wealthy countries and see if the same happens over there. But it would take some effort.

They'll end up on benefits.

Reduction in population - older population

There's no reason that the prices of everything would go up if employers paid a fair wage. There are too many employees who pay poor wages or have people on very low hour contracts - because staff get a top up and they don't have to pay them certain employee benefits. It should not be up to the benefits system to top up poor wages.

For example morrison are currently employing staff on four hour contracts

I used to work in security. My contracted hours were 8 a week. Sometimes they went to full time but not often. I was also paid min wage which at that point was 7.20 an hour

People should get a decent wage for a days work. In work poverty is horrible (I've been there).